Democracies have reached the terrain of “anything is true,” “that does not affect my freedoms or well-being, so is not important to me”… so, the use of the critical thinking and the analysis is questioned (or rather neglected and undervalued), which makes our societies a perfect target for manipulation and instrument of influence. It is therefore important to interconnect information and intelligence, to exploit the terrain of the argumentation and the analysis by bringing to the light the facts and not only words or ideas and, above all, not to lose oneself in the search for a project ofCounter-narrative, but rather make the reinforcement of the narrative itself and through the education.

INTRODUCTIONVladimir Putin’s combined strategy of dominating the geostrategic space, employing both a hard line, military involvement and political pressure, and a soft line, led by influence operations in key scenarios such as Syria or Ukraine but even affecting countries as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania … poses the problem of non-law of war in cyber space and the lack of foresight and response to influence operations in foreign territories. The Russian giant has been able to access all the fields and be flexible and adaptable to all kinds of changes and circumstances without violating their objectives and identity against an old competition (Europe and the United States), entrenched in their internal problems and lack of foresight and strategy; Russia has only to influence the weakest pillars of these disputes to shake a whole geopolitics of confused and unaddressed states. Right now, after the hard-fought lack of evidence of Russian meddling in the US presidential elections, France, Germany and the Netherlands are afraid of the same fate.

The Russian strategy of communication to influence the Western public is based on these main lines: to diminish the public confidence in its rulers, to foment and to foment the political fractures, to make popular the Russian agenda in the international politics and to generate confusion on the reality and The fiction of information.Camouflaging gray information (from confused and unverified sources) between mostly white (contrasted and open) information helps to widen those lines of confusion and mistrust in government facts or statements. In the end, those who dare to dive into the propaganda created by the Kremlin’s communication and influence apparatus, without a clear direction or formation, are at risk of being lost in a maelstrom of information, each with a different plot about the same story, which turns truth into something utopian and goals and ideals into pure hypocrisy. To lead to the sense of loss of orientation is one of the fundamental objectives of the Russian disinformation, because of disoriented individuals one arrives at fractured and blurred states. In the end, as has been announced in a Russian manual titled “Information-Psycological war operations: a short encyclopaedia and a guide (2011)” – where it has been specified that war of influence goes beyond persuasion methods and is better approximated to influence in social relations, and control of resources in strategic reserves – any instrument becomes a usable weapon; It is only necessary to use it without the ones who identify that instrument as a means of making war.

THE RUSSIAN NARRATIVE AND SOME EXAMPLES OF INFLUENCE SCENARIOSThe main message of the Russian narrative can be summarized as: “The Great Hypocrisy of the West”, attracting the glances to the pure relativism and to the more realistic perspective of the geopolitics, noting that the reality is supported by the perspectives; In this way, it generates the confusion and dissociation of what until now represents you and what until now you were part to, questioning it and seeing it from that critical perspective and so well positioned to highlight only that in which it is important to focus. The work of this disinformation, that information war that seeks to dismantle the perspectives, which promotes and enhances relativism against the only voice of truth, to create chaos, disunity and absolute mistrust, especially in the face of news that can not be so (For example, the Syrian conflict and the use of chemical weapons), makes the scenario manipulative and slave to the nationalist interests of the states.In 1999, Igor Sergev stated that Russia could not compete against the US military, instead, it had to enter the terrain of the “revolutionary” with asymmetric directions; It is here that, in the words of some Russian theorists, we enter the realm of the “psycho-sphere” and the level of the strategies of the ingenuity. In the end, faced with a lack of guidance of action and defense against the threat from the information environment, before a lack of understanding of the nature of this new scenario of combat, you can disarm a whole country with an operation of influence or meddling From the cyber field in its political direction and without the threat that Article 5 of NATO can be activated, because in the field of the “psycho-sphere” the agreements and military power of NATO are not contemplated. In this sense, we can hardly seem to have intervened in private talks or government accounts of the United States (by a persecuted hacker identified with the pseudonym of Guccifer 2.0) or that the campaign of influence of Putin has arrived until the United States – With the achievement of placing in power a president without a clear policy, provoking the American social disconnection and admirer of the Russian president, close to the possibility of bending to its foreign policies; It is not the result of deep friendships but the fulfillment of a primordial Russian objective: to break the American leadership and to misfit its policy.

But the structure of operations of the Russian influence goes beyond the legislative spheres. Has grown into a complex network composed of several international actors who, in the same scenario, intervene for the same purpose. The RT information chain, which was created in 2005 with the intention of increasing the Russian image outside its borders, after the 2008 conflict with Georgia, became one of the most influential Russian propaganda chains special impact on the public of extreme ideologies, whether left or right) by playing with the revolutionary and nationalist sense, to the point of having become a reference chain against a “discredited” Western media.Martín Kragh, a Russian analysis expert at the Swedish Institution of International Affairs, accused Russia of using an information war on Swiss territory with the aim of destabilizing the country and gaining influence. The study on the event, published in the Journal of Strategic Affairs, Kragh states that Russia has employed, having as a clear antecedent the psychological performances of the KGB, influence operations in Swiss territory to influence public opinion mainly through the implantation Of Trojans in Twitter accounts, stealing the identity of Swiss information by publishing in their name but with manipulated content, or spreading false information that discredits NATO, the loyalty of Swiss authorities due to dishonest actions, such as implications in Ukraine or support to the Kremlin.

In Belarus, 2/3 of the population watch Russian TV channels and, until recently, Russian disinformation campaigns in the country had not been so necessary (until there have been movements and criteria closer to the West after the tension with Europe due to the intrusion into Crimea), but the incitement of sectarianism and national division (especially invited through national media, such as EADaily or Regnum) are facilitating the playing field for Russia. Another example is from 2007, when Estonia announced the withdrawal of a memorial in favor of Soviet soldiers who started a war with their giant neighbor of psychological operations and disinformation, both domestically and abroad, which resulted in cyber actions (Account hacking) and direct (boycotts in the Estonian embassy in Russia or blockades to productions of this country) that put the alert to Estonia. And in Ukraine, the factors of the conflict also amplified, when the most listened and shocking weapons were those used in the media (mostly controlled by the Russians with the pro-Russian proletarian role as: Inter, Ukraina 24, Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukraine, television channels such as LifeNews, Россия1, Россия24, Первый канал, НТВ, РЕН ТВ …) and counterintelligence actions, such as the increasingly influential pro-Russian movement that mobilized in the country after the intrusion of forces Armed “unidentified” and that Putin denied its link with the Kremlin.

CONCLUSION – THE NEW COMBAT SCENARIO: THE HYBRID WARIn 2013, an article titled “The Value of Science in Prediction” was published in the Russian Military Courier, which presented the new scene of hybrid combat in which it would not be necessary to use direct force, but the use of strategies and tactics of influence in defense of national interests.Mark Galeotti, an expert in Russian history and security affairs, an English translator of this article, declares the current importance of the new combat terrain, the non-use of force to achieve political and strategic objectives. And Russia has become a master of the hybrid war, expanded largely from the Crimean performance of 2014 and, later, the Ukrainian crisis; And the main factor for success in the hybrid war is – apart from the lack of response and foresight (especially of affected states, still subject to the classical rules of war) – the terrain of the opaque, where relativism Is reinforced in a debate between truth and manipulation and where the unpredictable takes the lead in front of the predictable and in front of the much debated idealistic and cooperative politics.The use of hybrid warfare is no more than a strategy that accompanies and reinforces the geopolitical actions of a country, hiding the real purpose of the actor, preventing the use of violence or the direct collision of forces between actors, affecting the most vulnerable factors : The terrain of ideas; An enemy can be defeated physically in battle, but as the great strategist Sun Tzu claimed, wars are won in hearts and minds. And in a time where public opinion is less supportive of the war scenarios and economic and human losses of the conflict, hybrid war is gaining prominence and those actors most affected by a vulnerable or unstable economy need to provoke defeats in the area of information and The influence to avoid the last response of military intrusion. In 2000, in its Information Security Doctrine, Russia established the field of information as one of the priorities of the national interest, focusing on the protection of Russia’s image in the face of external threats of disrepute and Reinforcement of Russian values and patriotism.The effort that could be made against this threat, increasingly attractive and used by state and non-state actors, is the correct answer with truthful, objective and clear information (with data, with primary and authoritative sources) that support In the clarification of doubt and relativism; In an era where information is constant and direct, we drown ourselves in misinformation as there is a lack of depth, classification and argumentation and that is an urgent task that must fall into the hands of experts and those responsible for informing and investigating. On the other hand, it is important to emphasize the problem and present it, with its true nature and strategy, in a public way, so that it can be combated from the political and social spheres. In addition, continued analysis of the psychological operations scenario is essential, to follow their directions, audience objectives and campaign messages.